


His Red Right Hand

by Sectumsempra



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:23:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2471396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectumsempra/pseuds/Sectumsempra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim had said 'make him dead, Sebastian,' he'd said it like that, 'make him dead,' and then: 'leave him, I'll come get you,' leave him so Jim could get a glance; if Jim wanted to see the body the guy must have pissed the consulting little shit off in a real special way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Red Right Hand

The abandoned paper mill is little more than a shell, the sky is stretching out above your head, vast and darkening and shifting in different shades of blue. October's been unusually cold so far, and the air is fresh like it only ever is in the transition between fall and winter and it has a crispness to it as though snow's coming.

The brick wall of the mill is uneven against your back and you're all blood and bruises, Jim will be all hands -

unless he won't, because sometimes he shows off his immaculate self control just because he _can_ , but even so, he'll be wanting to bloody eat you alive when seeing the state of you.

Jim is never disappointed to see blood, but he prefers when it's your skin covered in it, prefers when it's yours. He hates it when you do the job clean and from afar – ironic, considering your expertise – so it's his lucky day.

All bruises and aches, the job of the night must have been expecting you, though Jim said he wouldn't – _setting up a fake meet, he won't be expecting a teensy little thing_ – but he had, hadn't he, he'd been in battle mode and he'd nearly managed to throw you down a goddamn flight of stairs, just nearly did, now your ankle isn't quite right, there's these bursts of pain like tiny shooting stars in your bones, probably a fracture, Jim will love seeing you limp.

But the guy, whatever he'd done to get in Jim's way, now he's just a body inside the mill and you're smoking John Silver under the stars, life's just not fucking fair, is it -

Jim had said _make him dead, Sebastian,_ he'd said it like that, _make him dead,_ and then: _leave him, I'll come get you,_ leave him so Jim could get a glance; if Jim wanted to see the body the guy must have pissed the consulting little shit off in a real special way.

You don't dispose of the bodies, you don't have that kind of expertise – well, in theory you do but in practise Jim is ingenious and when he kills people they don't turn up for the police to find. Or they do, if he wants them to, but never with any traces. No evidence. He's a ghost, Jim.

Not that Jim's prints are ever on the bodies. Not that he ever takes the shots, but it's all the same, you're his weapon, you're his, you think that perhaps if they found your DNA at a crime scene one of these days, it'd have traces of Jim in it.

Guilt by association. Because he got too fucking close, under-your-skin close. Left bits and pieces.

You blow smoke out through your nose, let the cigarette dangle from the corner of your mouth while re-loading your gun, just in case.

The muzzle is still hot. You press it to your skin, just under your chin; it's the afterglow of death, that heat. You think about dying, about dying at an abandoned paper mill under the October sky, and you think that yeah, Jim, the little fucker, warned the guy. He did, didn't he, you know in the pit of your stomach that he did, it's like the beginning of motion sickness, Jim warned him because.

Because you shan't have it easy. Killing unsuspecting pray is easy.

_Fuck you, Jim._

You wonder if it gives him a rush, taking the risk to lose you. At least it's some kind of sad satisfaction to know he'd never find someone better. Someone with the combination of your expertise and willingness to suck his cock when the job is done. Someone with the willingness to be his.

You can't remember life before Jim, what it was like, and you can hardly imagine there will be anything after, Jim's going to use you till you're all worn out, and if one day you stop working, if one day the tiny shred of a heart you do have gets in the way of something he needs you to do, then that's gonna be that.

You're afraid that you don't particularly mind.

Life like this is. Simple.

 

Air's heavy, damp, maybe it's not snow that's coming after all but a storm -

dried blood falls in flakes off of your skin. You're coming down from an adrenaline high and the stark contrast of everything, the angles of the mill and the stars and the gravel you're sitting on, it's going softer, the outlines no longer surgically cut, and you think maybe Jim isn't coming, after all, maybe you get to find your way back to civilisation on your goddamn own.

Another cigarette, then.

A minute or two passes and you flick the cigarette away, a seed of glow in a perfect arch – then the sound of a car engine and tires in the gravel comes floating through the woods, that crackling sound like a million little things breaking, and Jim's clean black SUV comes to a stop some distance away.

Jim almost never drives. He's got someone drive him around for the most part, sometimes it's you, but now the door on the driver's side opens and it's just him. You get up, supporting all your weight on one foot, stay leaned against the wall as he approaches. Holster your gun against better judgement.

The little devil with his eyes, colourless in the dark. Liqourice, onyx. 

Black-haired like a cat you don't wanna see crossing the road. Jim's bad luck, too.

He comes towards you, doesn't lick his lips but might as well, you're basically gift-wrapped, all blood, just missing the bow. He tilts his head slightly to the side as he observes your posture.

”Something the matter with your leg, tiger?”

”Come here.”

He does, it's a wonder but he complies, and when he's within reaching distance you grab a handful of the front of his shirt, spin him around and smash him up against the wall, says: ”My ankle is sprained -” it disgusts you how pathetic it sounds, ”- and it's thanks to you, you little fuck.” The blood from your hands gets smeared on his shirt, on his thousand pound suit.

At any other time, you'd be able to hold him in place whether he wanted it or not, but now you've only got one leg to balance on and he could easily use that to his advantage.

An askew little grin. ”How could I _possibly_ have had anything to do with that from thirty kilometers away?”

You snort, shake your head in some kind of postponed disbelief. ”You warned him about me. You fucking told him I was coming armed.” You watch a grin spread over his lips. One of the most dangerous men in London and you've had those lips around your cock. ”The things I should do to you, Jim...”

He grimaces. His face says _oh please._

”You've had it too easy, lately, Sebastian. You needed reminding that you're a predator. That guy – he was a...” Jim shrugs. ”... a house-cat. Domesticated. But you...” His hand comes up to hold your face, and though it's perfectly tender, it's also isn't, at all. His thumb brush over your stubble, the dried blood, then the cut over your eye. ”... you're still a tiger.” His eyes glint with amusement. ”I'm glad we got that sorted out.”

”Fuck off.”

”If I do, how'd you get back home with that ankle of yours? Now.” His hands comes to rest on top of yours, so tenderly, almost hovering over your skin, but you get the feeling he'll break them if you don't let go. Well, he could try. ”I'm assuming he's in there. I'm going in to have a peek, then we're going home, and I...” He looks you over again, you're a feast and he's starving, ”... I'm going to have my way with you... I can't wait to reopen some of those wounds.” A beat. ”Make some new ones in pretty places.”

You let go, after all, really just because as he points out, you can't do much on one leg.

”After you've had your peek, you little shit, we're going to the emergency room. I'm of no use to you if I can't fucking walk.” Jim brushes the blood off of his suit. ” _Then_ we'll go home... and you can do whatever the hell you want with me.”

Jim smirks. ”Good boy.”

”What about the body, anyway?” you ask as he turns his back and disappears around the corner.

”Don't you worry your little head about that, dear!” he calls back.

Well. If you went to prison there's no doubt Jim _could_ get you out in no time – it's the question if he'd care to that worries you.

It's like fate wanted your ankle to get fucked. In all the time you've known Jim, you've never been as curious about him as you are right now. Jim never gets his hands dirty, he hardly ever goes to the kill-sites, and now he's driven all the way here just to have a look at the body. It wouldn't be very clever, though, to jump on one leg all the way around the corner just to get a glimpse, would it. What if you tripped -

but you do anyway. And he's gonna hear you, he's gonna hear you because of the goddamned gravel, you can't fucking _sneak_ when you're ninety kilos and one-footed on gravel. Oh well.

When you peek into the concrete shell through the empty doorway, Jim's just standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the body, as though in waiting.

”Guy's a vampire or something?” you ask. He looks at you, blank-faced like a bloody porcelain doll. Lady Gaga's song comes to mind, _can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face..._

”Hm?”

You shrug. ”Thought maybe you're waiting for him to come back to life so you can stab him in the heart with a wooden stick.”

”That would have been funny if only it wasn't,” says Jim, voice low and tone detached.

”So are you gonna tell me who he is? You, coming all the way here just to see him. You wouldn't even do that for me, did I die. He an old boyfriend or something?”

Jim looks at you. There's a primal kind of darkness in him that sometimes shows, and it does now – reminding you that he's fully capable of actually leaving you out here. There's no reception on your phone, either -

”One up, Sebastian. He's _family_.”

”You're fucking kidding me. Who did I just kill? Daddy Moriarty?”

”Nah.” Jim makes a face, like daddy is a bad memory. ”He used to be my step-brother. Now he isn't. Isn't life mysterious?”

”Not really. He was alive, then I killed him. Pretty straight-forward.”

Jim grins a little at you. ”I bet you want to know why you killed him.”

A beat.

”I bet you're not gonna tell me.” Your whole body itches to know, because this must be, has to be some kind of personal revenge, and Jim doesn't really care for anything, except for not being bored and perhaps outsmarting Sherlock Holmes, so what the fuck could a guy have done to earn this special place in Jim's cold heart -

also the mere prospect of Jim having family is dizzying, impossible, of Jim having a past where he was some kind of real person with a mother and -

”It's heart-warming how well you know me,” says Jim. Jim who used to be someone's step-brother and now isn't.

Maybe that's the point.

”Don't think so much, Sebastian,” he says. ”It doesn't suit you.” Then he squats, looks into unseeing eyes. ”Was good seeing you again, brother, though the circumstances are unfortunate...” He chuckles to himself as though he's just pulled off a hilarious joke.

He exists the building and you jump after him like some stupid kid playing hopscotch in imaginary squares.

You get in the car. It's unsettling that someone else is coming for the body, that you have to leave it, but this is life, this is life with Jim, it's not knowing if the body's really going to be taken care of or if Jim's now decided an experiment could be fun: what kind of person would Sebastian be in prison?

You imagine you'd do real good, because what – who - could be more dangerous than Jim; Jim whom you fall asleep beside every night, turn your back to in your sleep... yeah. You'd do well. If things would come to that. It's a bitter kind of comfort.

You get in the car and Jim takes you towards the main road, and when you're out of the woods the landscape is austere, grey in the pale light, and above you the sky, the whole of the bloody universe streches out, endlessly old -

you think about eons and eons of time that has passed and will pass without you and Jim, and it makes it seem like nothing matters, absolutely nothing really matters when you think about it, what you do, what you do you and Jim, because even Jim is nothing, really.

”What are you thinking about, dear?” he asks.

You think about how perhaps Jim has decided to make his bloodline extinct, so that he'll be a rare fucking species, and you think about siblings and cousins that might be, about how some of them might be children, about how that rain never came and that, as you turn out onto the highway, you end up driving straight towards the moon.

”I'm not,” you groan, as the pain in your ankle sparks and ignites and burns through your lower leg like wildfire, ”as you said, doesn't suit me.”


End file.
